AFRICA: The Somalis Go

Out of the nettle of disastrous defeat, Somalia's President Mohamed Siad
Barre last week sought to pluck a flower: the U.S. military assistance
for which he has been campaigning for months. From Mogadishu, Barre
ordered home 20,000 Somali troops who have been battling Ethiopians,
and recently Cubans and Russians, in the neighboring Ogaden region of
Ethiopia in support of ethnic Somalis living there. By playing the
peacemaker and withdrawing his invasion forces from territory to which
he had no claim anyway, Barre satisfied a Washington condition for...